In a message dated 10/27/04 12:59:24 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
gert.cuykens at gmail.com writes:
>If you buy a product what would you want ? A pretty box or pretty
>software ? Finishing the product is just marketing and trying to make
>a very pretty box to put the software in. When something is open
>source and you want to sell it you are forced to make it the best
>peace of code out there. Its what i call healthy competition. For me
>open source translates into "If you think you can do better be my
>guest" Finishing a product and making it closed source is just plain
>wrong. Its like stealing from the church basket. Every body shares
>something and you want to take it and keep it for your self.
^--------------------
I want :
1) a product thats finshed. Not with a long TODO list of basic features
2) a product that is bulletproof (or near so), that doesnt have only
25% of cases tested
3) a product that I don't have to spend 3 weeks of my time (@$300/hr)
to get to the point that I can use it
4) a product where I have a contact that I can ask questions, and that
I can expect to get obviously broken things fixed
Any marginal programmer can write programs that do stuff. Getting people
to be willing to pay for it is an entirely different level of talent and work.
Its not just "marketing". Marketing comes AFTER you have a product.
Are people who have written custom GUI front ends for Linux stealing?
They're not stealing, they are getting paid for the value that they've added.
Are people that sell bottled water stealing? No one is forcing you to pay
for water. But its been cleaned and nicely packaged and it fits in your
cupholder, so you buy it.